No injury worries for Eagles

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Stephen Keshi’s secret assessment of his team has revealed that no player has hidden injuries.By Tunde Eludini

There are no major injury worries in the Super Eagles camp ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations final round qualifier against the Lone Stars of Liberia.

A statement from Ben Alaiya, media officer to the Eagles, indicates that there was an assessment of the fitness level of the home based players in camp at Tuesday’s training exercise, held at the FIFA Goal project pitch in Abuja.

“The management of the national team assumed another dimension when the technical and medical crew at Tuesday’s training tried to fish out players that could probably be hiding injuries,” the statement read.

According to Alaiya, the teams Head Coach, Stephen Keshi, led the secret search, which was unknown to the players. Keshi said it was important because some of the highly rated players might have hidden injuries, which would not help the cause of the nation; hence the need to fish them out by the technical and medical crew.

He however revealed that after a close examination of the players during their pre-training exercises, no serious detection was made; although Heartland’s Kabiru Umar and Benjamin Francis were pulled out for special attention by the crew, including team doctor, Ibrahim Gyaran; and physiotherapist, Wale Oladejo.

After that, training went on smoothly; with all players exhibiting excellent fitness, awaiting the arrival of the foreign based stars.

The team doctor, Gyaran, said afterwards that there were no serious injury worries, as the exercise was just a routine one targeted at players who were part of the Federations Cup final, and the third place games played at the weekend in Lagos.

“The team is physically intact and there is no cause for alarm, we just want to ensure that all our players are in good shape since they have been away from the national camp for sometimes,” Gyaran said

Meanwhile, Coach Keshi is expected to trim down the number of home based players to 11 from 26 by the end of the week.

The selected11 will join foreign based counterparts to strategise for the all important clash against the Lone Stars of Liberia.